


don't tell the gods i left a mess

by Sangrylah



Category: Miraculous Ladybug
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Alternate Universe - Medieval, Fairy Tale Elements, Fairy Tale Style, Gen, Insurrection, Revolution, let's guillotine the rich, warnings/spoilers in the end note
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-08
Updated: 2020-01-08
Packaged: 2021-02-27 05:34:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,998
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22041898
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sangrylah/pseuds/Sangrylah
Summary: The story of a warlock who isn't a man anymore and a girl who isn't just a girl anymore.Feat. McDonald's, Princess Bride, Aristocats, Supernatural and Newton's laws references._ _ _ _ _For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.Mistake. Correction.Warlock. Prophecy.Oath-breaker. Oath.
Comments: 3
Kudos: 10





	don't tell the gods i left a mess

**Author's Note:**

> Content warnings (that can be spoilers) in the end note, as usual.  
> Beta courtesy of my dear Mulch and Ariani Lee, best beta in the fucking world.

There’s a warlock. Before he was a warlock he was a king, and before he was a king he was a father, and before he was a father he was a husband, and before that he was a man.

He is a king no more, a father no more, a husband no more.

Mainly, he is a man no more.

There’s a girl. She’s young – a girl, not a woman. She has dark hair and dark eyes, even if they’re blue, She wears a vest with a hood and fists her hands deep into its pockets. Her boots are well worn and sturdy, much like herself. She walks in the hours when the sun is more of a thought than a truth, and alone.

There was a boy. He was blond as the sun and fair as the sky. He was loved and beloved. He was kind. He was nice. He smiled at the servants, spent more time petting the dogs than reading, delighted in all the sweets the kitchen created. He didn’t like cheese. He played with the bakers’ daughter. He was a child.

But the warlock is a father no more.

Before everything, there were books. Books that called witches _blessing_ , sorcerers _gift,_ and wizards _guides_. They did not call warlocks any of those words. They did not, in truth, call warlocks anything at all. Knowledge fades but books remember. Books do not forget. They did not forget that warlocks are different. They did not forget what the word means - deceiver. Oath breaker.

Traitor.

**PART I.**

They knock late at night. He doesn’t want to answer, but he can’t pretend no one is home either, for he is the only house still lit in the whole street. They knocked at his door for a reason.

He grabs a spoon from the table and tiptoes to the door. Peering through the eye-hole, he can see that whoever is knocking is small, huddled over themselves and alone. He himself is sturdy and well fed; he can probably take them in a fight. He hopes they don’t want to fight.

He opens the door.

They are a girl. She’s small and thin. The rain glistens on her oiled jacket. She’s drenched. Her hair is dark and dripping under her hood. It’s a girl. _Oh_.

“I need shelter for the night, please.”

He opens the door and hushers her in. He checks that no one else is outside and closes the door. He presses his forehead against the old wood. A girl came knocking at his door in the middle of the night. So it is, then. It’s starting.

He offers her a shower, clothes and food without much thought, still reeling. He heats up leftovers while she changes. He feels a bit numb. He feels like laughing, and never stopping.

This might be the most important moment of his life and here he is, stirring soup and meat with a crooked spoon under the faded lights of his kitchen space in his pajamas. His slippers have holes and the hem of his shirt is more than frayed. They don’t write it like that, in the books.

What is my life?

“Sir?”

“Yes!”, he barks, and spins on his heels, dripping soup on his left slipper.

“Thank you for the shower.”

“Oh. Yes. You’re welcome. Eat.”

She stares. Yes, that didn’t make much sense, did it? “... okay.” She sits at the table.

His clothes are way too big on her. God, she’s so small. Her hair is dark and her skin is pale. She looks like a ghost.

He puts a bowl of stew in front of her, grabs the bread and the butter and adds it to it. Nothing better than buttered bread dipped in soup, in his opinion. Butter is good for the soul; screw what everyone else says.

He sits at the table in front of her and stares. It’s not polite and it must be uncomfortable but he can’t make himself stop.

She came. She knocked at his door. She asked for shelter.

She eats her soup in silence, use her buttered bread like a second spoon, licks her lips. He keeps staring. She’s thin, and that shouldn’t be a shock but it is. She looks just like a girl. God…

He asks if she wants a second bowl and she shakes her head and yawns behind her hands. He shows her to the couch – he’s making her sleep on his _couch_ , he thinks hysterically – and gives her two blankets and a pillow. He feels like he should do more, but realistically there isn’t much more he can do.

She falls asleep almost immediately. She’s oddly trusting, for a lone girl sleeping in a male stranger's house. It feels meaningful. She isn’t scared of him. She came, and she knocked at his door in the night, and she ate his food and now sleeps on his couch. It feels important.

But maybe she’s just exhausted. She’s alone and so young. So thin. Just a girl.

He wakes up early but something tells him she wakes up earlier. Trying his best to tiptoe around his own home, he gathers basic medication and non-perishables. Bread, cheese, water, some juice. Adds in a few fruits, for the vitamin. They write about this in books, he thinks as he dumps everything in an old bag pulled from the back of his closet. Bread, cheese and fruits. Just to be contrary, he adds a few slices of ham. Meat is good for the body. She’s too thin. She’s just a girl.

He puts the bag on the table, a note on the bag, and stares. This is it. She will take the bag, disappear, and he will probably never see her again.

Ah, well. He’s going to be busy in the following weeks, anyway.

He goes to bed.

When he wakes up, the blankets are neatly piled up at one end of the couch and the pillow lies on top of them. The bag is gone. Only the note remains. He takes it and brushes his thumb under the name pressed in the paper.

He exhales softly. She’s gone. It is starting. It started a long time ago, actually. Right. Okay.

He burns the note. No evidence, no crime.

 _Strength and hopes from the people, Ladybug_ goes in flames under his eyes.

Time to get to work. A rebellion doesn’t happen by itself.

He came in the day. Politely knocked at his door and knew all the right words when asked.

 _She will come to you,_ he said. _She will ask for help, for shelter maybe. Help her. She’s the Ladybug._

The Ladybug! At his? As if! Even so... _What does she look like?_

He laughed. _What do you think she looks like? She’s a girl. She looks just like a girl._

A moment of hesitation, and then: _She’s sick. A cold. Give her medicine, please._

**PART** **I** **I.**

Ladybug is their last hope.

There has been another hope, shaped in the form of a teen with blond hair and blue eyes, but that hope died when the teenager did. Not seeing his corpse doesn’t mean they don’t _know_.

Most people got quiet, when the prince disappeared. What do you do when the people in charge refuse to follow the rules? How do you fight back when the system allowing you to isn’t working?

And suddenly rose a rumor. There is a girl… She is meant to defeat the mad king. She has powers, the voices say. There’s a prophecy, the voices whisper. I saw her, the voices swear. She has a cold and needs medicine, the voice pleaded. She can defeat him, the voices promise. Help her, the voice asked.

No one know where the rumors started. No one has seen the prophecy. No one is sure what she looks like.

No one is sure that she even exists.

But they need a solution and faith has to count for something. Ladybug is a figurehead, and maybe it is made of straw, but it is enough to rally people, and that what’s they need. A rebellion has to be united, and resistance has to be cohesive.

Moreover, no one actually knows how to defeat the mad king. They need a solution. Ladybug is their last hope.

There _is_ a girl.

And that’s what she is – a girl. She’s young. She has dark hair and dark eyes, even if they’re blue. She walks in the hours when the sun is more thought than truth, always alone.

She didn’t start walking for the resistance. She didn’t start walking to save people. She doesn’t mean to topple the head of the government.

She started walking because she saw her parents die. She started walking because their eyes glowed purple and they didn’t recognized her anymore. It was the beginning.

But not all who wander are lost, even if they don’t know where they’re going. Everyone gets somewhere at some point, and this is hers.

Before it was a title, Ladybug was a nickname. One given to a child by another because she always did these amazing feats that amazed him. She was his ladybug, and he, who was graceful as a newborn colt, was her black cat.

The nickname died with the boy.

Except it didn’t.

They call for her in their sleep, in their homes, in their private thoughts. Not anyone but _Ladybug_. And Ladybug, forgotten and buried she may be, is her.

She didn’t start walking for the rebellion. She doesn’t want to change the world, and yet…

Her boots are well worn by now. Maybe it’s time she goes home. And if she can kill her parents’ murderer while she’s at it, well.

A noble lady once said that ladies don’t start fights. They finish them.

Ladybug keeps walking.

Ladybug walks and the word spreads, as if her footsteps entrenched letters into the earth, into the winds.

Doors are knocked on at night and opened. People gather. People plan. Everywhere, if you know where to look, people ready and willing.

They fed her and clothe her and house her. They stare and breathe her name and question her. They ask for guidance, for a plan. _Ladybug, what do we do?_

Ladybug has a plan; it is exceedingly simple. I’m going to fight him, she says.

And then?, they ask.

Then I kill him, she says.

And then?, they whisper, awed.

She shrugs and says: Whatever you want.

They look at her. She’s just a girl but she’s not _just_ a girl. She’s… something. Their last hope. No one actually knows how to defeat the mad king. They need a solution. Ladybug is their last hope.

It took a long time and not much at all, in some ways. The people is afraid, and scared people lash out.

The mad king is not going to be king much longer.

She sits at the top of the sire of a church since long burnt and stares at the moon. She didn’t know it was so small, before she started walking. The books talked so much about its power that it seems utterly ridiculous, hung like this in the sky. Tiny. Weak.

She is not one to break oaths, though; she offers the juice of her apple to the moon and the flesh of the fruit to the stars. She presented her bread to the earth as the sun rose earlier this morning, her hands wet with dew and darkened with moist soil. She laid her knife and bolas under the rising sun light as she lays them under the waning moonlight.

Warlocks and mad kings are traitors, but she isn’t.

It’s bait.

The technical term calls it a diversion, but everyone knows the truth: they’re bait, so that Ladybug’s escort can successfully get her in the palace. She assured many of them many times that she can make her own way inside after that, actually tried to tell them that she can make it to the palace by herself as well. They accepted the former as truth and the latter as optimism. She is the Ladybug but she is a girl, and none of them is going to let a teenager go in alone. This is their fight, too. A rebellion doesn’t happen by itself.

The plan is such: they riot. Ladybug’s escort uses the _diversion_ to get her to the palace, or inside, or even to the warlock – as far as they can, in truth. And then, they fight.

All of them.

No one talks of the actual fighting that is going to happen. No one talks of how difficult it is going to be to face a brainwashed child, to hit a sibling, to get hurt by a spouse.

There’s a reason nothing happened until now, and the prince’s disappearance wasn’t it.

They don’t try to be subtle. It’s a riot, not a march. It’s a rebellion.

Mad king, the people is coming for you.

She’s hidden among taller and burlier people. It isn’t hard; she’s smaller than almost everyone. Still a teenager, you see. She shouldn’t be doing this but there she is, wrapped in her oiled jacket, with a knife in her boot and her bolas coiled around her waist, no more and no less than usual. This is how it is going to happen: he and she, as they are.

She does not see the actual fighting. Her escort sneaks around in the shadows, hiding and praying when guards come rushing by, drawn to the rumbling mass of people on the other side of the palace.

They reach the palace with surprising ease, and that’s where things get complicated.

They’re rounding the corner of the first internal corridor when they stumble upon a servant. She screams in fright before Rogers can silence her.

Everyone stops moving. Some stop breathing. They listen intently for any sign of movement inside the palace. Nothing happens. She can feel her heartbeat starting to slow down when a feeling of _wrongness_ slithers down her spine. She can barely breathe before two guards seem to appear out of nowhere, four or five feet in front of them. The servant whimpers. Both guards are blond young men. No one reacts to their appearance.

Surprisingly, the teacher reacts first: she lunges at the guard closest to her and manages to embed her knitting needles in his shoulder with astounding strength. A bubble seems to burst, and suddenly everyone is fighting. They have an archer, because they tried to be smart and long-range shooting is always appreciated, but he’s pretty useless in close quarters. He uses his bow as a cudgel instead and enthusiastically bashes the second guard’s head with it. She throws herself into the fray, slides between someone’s knees, ties a guard’s ankles together with her bolas and _pulls_ , bringing them down. She twists her hand to unwrap the ropes and goes to do the same to the second guard. Spelled people have powers though, and she goes flying into a wall when he backhands the air between them. By the time she manages to get back up, ears ringing and left shoulder burning, the fight is over. Not all of them get back up.

She stares at the black-haired fellow, trying to breathe and to identify her emotions. That man is dead. Is it better than being turned into a puppet? She doesn’t know. She doesn’t even know his _name_.

“We have to go,” Rogers says. The archer opens his mouth to say something but appears to change his mind. He glances away and busies himself with his bow. She hopes it’s not broken.

The teacher pulls her bloody needles from the corpses of the guards and rudimentary cleans them on their armor. None of them are broken. It appears that knitting is a lot more badass than people are lead to believe.

“Everyone ready?”, Rogers asks. They nod.

They go.

She wasn’t lying when she said that she knew her way inside. She knows every corridor and every room from the wild hide-and-seek games they used play. She knows every art work from the years she spent growing up among them. She knows these stairs, these embellishments, these windows, these drapes.

The problem is they don’t know where the king is, and the palace is a sprawling maze of corridors and rooms. Full with adrenaline and shock, they forgot to ask the servant about it. They elect to go to the royal quarters first, because it seems the most logical option.

A patrol stumble upon them. They lose the archer. Rogers’ arm is bleeding.

They get to the second floor, sneak up on a guard. He was the teacher’s former neighbor. They use cloth from his uniform to bandage their wounds. They’re exhausted. No one knows how long it’s been since they’ve gotten inside but it feels like a day and a half. No natural light can penetrate and time feels like a foreign concept. Everything is white and gray and dark. They don’t have a time frame, precisely, but the rumbling of the crowd outside, broken by screams and yells, urges them on.

They don’t make it to the third floor.

A patrol pins them down in a ballroom halfway through the second floor. They realize, too late, that they’ve been herded there for this exact purpose. This is not a two guards unit either. It was a trap and the ballroom is a slaughterhouse.

Rogers and the teacher stand as a wall between her and the guards.

“You have to go,” the teacher says. She bites back a _No_. She does. She really does. She has a mad king to fight.

“We knew what we were doing,” Rogers adds. “We all knew.”

The guards are closing on them, unhurried. Certain of their victory. And why, indeed, would they worry? There is only one door and there is a dozen guards between them and said door. They’re trapped.

She is Ladybug. She has to go.

She unwraps her bolas. “I’m sorry.”

“We’re not,” the teacher – what’s her name? God, she doesn’t even _know_ – promptly replies but she’s already swinging up up up and away, away.

**PART** **I** **I** **I** **.**

She hides behind the second floor balcony as she considers her options. She’s mostly unharmed, and she still has her knife. She knows the place. She’s... on her own. Her escort is… has fallen. She’s alone. But they got her to the palace. Not to the mad king, maybe, but that’s her part. They did theirs.

She still doesn’t know where the warlock is. The royal quarters are still her best bet. She’s never been on the royal floor, but if her memory of gossip serves her right, she can get inside the royal chambers by the windows lining the facade of the third floor. If not, she can improvise.

Her mind made, she throws her bolas, jumps on the railing of the balcony and swings.

Time for her to do her job.

The windows are open.

She can see it clearly from where she hangs from the edge of the roof by her fingers.

The top floor of the palace is not really a floor. It looks like a smaller construction built on top of the palace, the rotunda thrown in as a bonus. It looks grotesque, made especially so by the roof sticking out forward by a solid fifteen feet.

Since it is smaller, there is a lot of empty space around it. Empty space that she will have to cross to reach the windows – the _open_ windows. Like an invitation, or a dare. Like a trap. Another one.

She grits her teeth and takes some time to wait out any patrol that might be hidden on the other side of the third floor. The top floor of the palace has comparatively less physical defenses than the first ones since anyone has to get through them and the guards stationed inside first. Humans aren’t supposed to be able to penetrate by the roof, but crawling is easy for ladybugs. She can’t hear anything from where she is, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t any guards. She forces herself to breathe in and out, deep and slow, and to ignore the roaring of the fighting crowd below her.

She waits. She counts heartbeat and blinks. She moves her fingers to avoid cramps, slowly stretches her legs.

Nothing moves. No one appears.

One more breath and she’s tearing through empty space like an arrow. She gets under the roof and glues herself to it, waits for an attack or a call. Nothing. Relief and anger war in her heart. All that precious time, wasted for nothing! She shakes her head. She can’t think like this. She frog-crawls along the bottom of the roof, settles above the first window. She listens for a moment. No noise inside. She risks popping her head in and quickly assesses the room despite the dimness of the light. Plush armchairs, thick carpets, valuable collectibles, books; that’s it. There’s no one in sight. She drops into the room. The thick black rugs mute the noise of her footsteps. Everything is so monochrome she feels too colorful in her dark green and brown outfit. No one can live like this without going crazy.

Which would explain some things, then.

She goes to the open door leading to a second room and peers into a kind of salon, which seems as empty as the study she’s in. The same black and white furniture stares at her without giving her any clue as to where their master is. Still, she inspects the room carefully before going to the next and last one. This one is the bedroom and is bigger than the three rooms her parents were allocated put together. Still black and white. The bed is made. This morning, or earlier? Could it be that he isn’t even _there_ ? Did they do _all of that_ for nothing ? Anger rises in her. All of this, for _naught_?

She strides into the room and starts to go through the drawers of the small cabinet at the end of the four posters bed. You could fit eight people in this bed, let alone one heartless man.

She finds nothing of interest in the drawer and in a fit of rage, throws the whole thing at the opposite corner of the wall where it crashes with a hollow _thud_. She freezes. Hollow…?

She jumps over the bed and inspects the butterfly patterned wall, looking for... anything, really. A hole. A sigil. A mark of some kind. A… darker butterfly. Hands get dirty and you can only wash paint so many times, after all.

She gently pushes on the bigger wing of the butterfly. It melts into the wall with a bizarre _click_ sound. A part of the wall retreats inwards, revealing a staircase. The wall swings back once she’s through. No light. She resorts to feeling the wall and column of the staircase with her fingertips and the edges of the stairs with her booted toes, thankful for the reduced width of the space. It is slow going but she ends up at the top of the staircase, in a… room, barely clearer than the staircase. She is getting annoyed of the dimness and the blindness. Careful of her footing, she slowly spins on herself to try and find an exit.

“The door is on your right, Ladybug.”

And now she’s angry. All this time, the mad king was _waiting for her_. Playing with her.

She storms out of what she discovers being the rotunda and stops.

In her dreams, his face was ravaged by the madness, his eyes wide and his cheeks hollow. The truth is that the mad king does not look mad. He looks… just like he used to. Just like he did the day he turned her parents into slaves.

He doesn’t even seem to have aged. His son is dead and there is no trace of it of his face. Maybe this is the madness, then: the absence of emotions.

He takes a dainty sip of his delicate cup, primly licks his lips and leans over the arm of the plush armchair he is sat on to depose the cup on a fine tea table, close to a book. He leans back in the chair and steeples his fingers on his crossed knees.

She suddenly, intensely, utterly despises him.

“Ladybug.”

“Lord Agreste.”

He smiles. “I know who you are.”

She raises her chin. “Then you know why I’m here.”

“Oh, yes. You mean to stop me. The fated Ladybug, blah, blah, blah.” He smiles at her as at a child, soft and indulgent. “Where do you think that rumor started?”

Oh that’s bad. That’s very bad. The whole rebellion birthed of the idea of Ladybug; if it is but a lie…

Nonetheless – she didn’t exactly come for the rebellion. It was… a bonus. And an opportunity.

She uncoils her bolas from her waist, starts walking towards the warlock who destroyed her family. The stones drag at her side with a sound like a dying animal. “Ladybug is a childhood nickname. My name is Marinette Dupain-Cheng. You killed my parents.” She breathes in deep. “Prepare to die.”

Gabriel Agreste stands up. He opens his tailored jacket, flexes his fingers. He smiles at her again, courteous this time. “Shall we, then?”

Then a flash of purple light hits Marinette in the chest and throws her into the rotunda’s wall.

Truth: Warlocks are not sired, for nature, creator of all oaths, cannot beget oath-breakers.

Warlocks aren’t sired; warlocks become. It is a simple process, really.

Warlocks are, and always will be, traitors. They do what traitors do: they betray. They attack.

**Part IV.**

The purple spell hits Marinette in the solar plexus and bodily flings her into the soft curve of the rotunda’s facade, some twenty feet of stone backwards, at breakneck speed.

Before it was title, ladybug was a childhood nickname.

Before it was a title, ladybug was a reality.

Truth: Marinette Dupain-Cheng is lucky.

Marinette doesn’t fall. Marinette knocks on the right doors during the right nights. Marinette has a loyal friend. Marinette eats non-poisonous berries. Marinette finds the few books that, among the gigantic royal library, can help her hone her skills. Marinette aims true. Marinette doesn’t break her bones. Marinette fits into too small spaces and sticks to smooth surfaces. Marinette escapes when the mad king turns his staff into slaves. Marinette doesn’t die.

Marinette doesn’t die. The spell doesn’t unspool her rib cage. The breakneck speed doesn’t break her neck. The crash doesn’t crush her spine.

Marinette doesn’t die.

But _fuck_ it _hurts_.

Marinette survives. She gets back up.

Her wrist is broken. Her shoulder is dislocated. Her knees buckle. She feels faint.

Marinette doesn’t die.

Ladybug is a childhood nickname given to a child by another child, awed by the wondrous feats she always executed.

Truth: No one even said nicknames aren’t accurate.

And Marinette Dupain-Cheng does not die because, see, for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.

Mistake. Correction.

Warlock. Prophecy.

Gabriel Agreste. Marinette Dupain-Cheng.

Oath-breaker. Oath.

Marinette gets back up. And then she ducks, tucks and rolls, and swears. Lord Agreste smiles.

“Not bad.”

She answers uncouthly.

They fight.

He is tall, powerful and malicious.

She is quick, agile and lucky.

It doesn’t seem fair. It isn’t.

She’s losing.

Losing blood and losing the fight.

He hasn’t been able to break anything else of her body since his initial attack but he added a smattering of cuts and bruises to his tally. She, in turn, managed to trip him twice and land a few hits but she has been fairly busy dodging the waves of his spells. The open space puts her at a disadvantage; she has nowhere to hide or to swing to and from. The warlock’s spells are all purple and this uniformity means that she has to evade them all. She’s expending significantly more energy than he is; she cannot continue like this for much longer and they both know it.

She’s losing.

Tension in her muscles makes her frame shake softly. She needs to move before he forces her to. She needs to take control of the situation. How?

She lost her knife in his thigh some time ago and regrets not having a second one, or even four others. Her bolas remain in her possession, securely wrapped around her unbroken wrist, but they are not what one would call good offensive weapons. She needs time to get the velocity required for an effective hit and he throws spells faster than that. Experience has proved that rushing him isn’t effectual either; he can easily keep her at bay with his spells. Her luck is next to useless in this setting. There is nowhere to hide in this open space. She’s stuck and the small, _amused_ smirk on the warlock’s face tells her that it is exactly what he intended. Mad may the king be but he engineered this simulacra of a fight to occur exactly as he needed it to to become its victor.

The thought rains fire in her brain, her blood.

NO. He won’t. She won’t let him.

She did not walk for months to stop now. She did not go through the hard nights and the harder days to _fail_ _**here**_. She will _not_ let her parents’ murderer go free unscathed. He _has_ to pay. He _will_. She won’t lose!

She just needs… something. Anything. A change. A twist. _Anything_.

“HEY, ASSBUTT!!”

They barely have the time to react. A black shape launches itself from somewhere around the rotunda and suddenly the mad king is bleeding on the floor.

She should be surprised, but anger is a stronger force. She throws herself at the mad king. She doesn’t know who the newcomer is – they attacked the warlock so they might be on her side, but she’s not taking any chances.

The warlock is already getting up when she bodily checks him. Smaller and lighter as she is, she still manages to force him down. She presses her knees around his ribs to stay on top of him and – hesitates. What can she do, with no weapon?

It is a mistake. Big hands reach up, wrap around her throat and _squeeze_. She futilely tries to break their hold. The stranger’s staff hits the warlock’s forearms with a sickening – exhilarating – _crunch_. She takes advantage of the mad king’s loosened hold to roll away and stand up while he yells, in pain or anger or both.

She doesn’t waste any second and uncoil her bolas from her arm. Seemingly unbeatable, the warlock is back on his feet already, barely hindered by his injured arms.

The newcomer twirls his staff and takes a low sidestep. She imitates him in reverse. They circle the mad king.

A moment. Two.

They fight.

Fighting, in a way, is easy. A fight is a series of smaller events. One step, then a second, a third, and you’re already running full tilt towards the end.

You don’t always mean to run. Sometimes, only when you find yourself at the do you realize that you were sprinting.

Take this: she doesn’t mean to strangle him. She was trying to tie him up with her bolas and suddenly her head hit the pavement and she was caught under his weight and trying to keep him _still_ and then she realizes that there is a simple way to do it. An effective solution.

She did say she would kill him, after all.

Who said bolas aren’t adequate weapons?

She thought about killing him the way you think about becoming wealthy. It might never happen – will probably never happen – but it is a nice thought.

Truth: Be careful what you wish for.

She thought killing him would be easier.

She thought her grief and rage and hatred would fuel her and it would be easy, but her arms ache and she’s out of breath and her hands hurt inside the coils of her garrote. She didn’t and doesn’t really want to kill him, in truth, but she’s only fourteen, only a girl, and she doesn’t know how to stop mad kings without violence. None of the adults suggested anything else so it’s the only plan she’s got, and she can’t back down now, not with her ankles wrapped around the mad king’s thighs and her garrote wrapped around his throat, not when he’s big and tall and trashing for all he’s worth, unwilling to die and able to prove it. He bucks up violently against her and makes her battered, smaller body collide against the shiny floor again and again and again and she’s holding on by sheer determination, her eyes firmly anchored in the dark shape of the stranger sitting astride the mad king and attempting to keep him subdued and immobile, for all the good it’s doing, and she can see blood on his chin and spit on his lips and crimson under his nails and determination in the line of his shoulders. He’s trying his best to help her and after everything, after the months of walking and the teacher, she can’t abandon when they’re this close, she can’t, and she can’t feel her legs anymore but the warlock is slowing down.

She ignores the agony in her hands and uses the glide provided by her own blood to wrap her rope one more time around her fingers and then she _pulls,_ arches against the pavement to put her elbows into it, pulls until she can’t see straight, pulls until she feels like she has to have beheaded him by now, but she still can hear his rasping breaths, pulls until she’s sure she’s cut her fingers off, pulls until the memory of her purple-eyed parents is the only thing real, pulls until the mad king’s hands falls limply from her ally’s throat and then she _pulls some more_ , again, always, until she’s screaming and sobbing with the pain and the effort and the _death_ of it.

She opens her mouth to breath and she can’t, there is blood on her ropes and it’s not hers, she tries to grip him tighter and she can’t feel her legs, she thinks that she has nothing to take anything of his left and this is what convinces her, at last, that the mad king is dead.

She stops pulling.

Her arms are locked.

She’s stuck under a dead man and her arms are trying to kill him still.

She rolls her head back until she can’t see Gabriel Agreste’s hair any longer and tries to breathe in.

It’s a sunny day.

She feels empty.

Somewhere below them, the sound of fighting disappears.

“My lady.”

She blinks.

“Is he dead?”

She hopes so.

She wishes he wasn’t.

“Yeah.”

“Oh.”

She lets her head loll forward until she can see the stranger that fought with her, her unexpected ally. She doesn’t know his name. They killed a warlock together and she doesn’t know who he is. She opens her mouth.

He pushes his hood back.

He is blond as the sun and fair as the sky. She knows how he looks when he smiles at the servants and pets dogs. He probably still doesn’t like cheese. He played with the bakers’ daughter and later on, killed with her.

He is a child no more.

Truth?

Sometimes, people don’t see any corpse because there isn’t any to see.

Sometimes, princes disappear before they get killed.

Sometimes, princes find old prophecies in their childhood libraries and start spreading rumors about the bravest person they know.

Trapped under the weight of a dead man that her arms are trying to kill still, the fated Ladybug can only watch as her childhood friend cries over the corpse of the father he helped murder.

Somewhere below them rises the rumbling of happiness.

**FiN.**

**Author's Note:**

> Warnings: non-graphic violence (implied action and deaths); off-screen, mentioned deaths; murder and graphic depiction thereof.
> 
> This is my first and doubtlessly only ML work. Hope you enjoyed! There's some of my best writing in this piece and writing it was very pleasant. Please consider leaving a comment!


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